The Human Orchid
Ystads Konstmuseum, 2024-2025
Curator: Ellen Klintenberg, Ystads konstmuseum
In the exhibition The Human Orchid, Lena Bergendahl’s latest film projects are shown in a spatial installation that moves between finished film and branches of the process of coming into being. With a visual language inspired by science fiction, Bergendahl makes connections every which way across natural science phenomena, philosophical thought models, and film and literary history references In these connections, new stories arise that, like the orchid’s underground rhizome, propagate themselves in a variety of directions.
In the title work of the exhibition, we follow a group of individuals who look to be human but whose behavior suggests something else. They seem to be connected to each other through a sort of network or root system. Through sessions reminiscent of psychological personality tests, their perceptions and orientation abilities are evaluated. Together, they perform different examinations to approach an understanding of humanity.
Other main characters are the bog and the fly orchid, a wild and very unusual orchid species that thrives in damp soil. The fly orchid, which grows in certain places in Scania, has insect-like flowers and lives in symbiosis with another species; to a male thread-waisted wasp, the fly orchid appears to be a female thread-waisted wasp. Ignorant of the fly orchid’s true nature, the male wasp believes it is mating with the flower, thus contributing to pollination.
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari describe this process in their book “A Thousand Plateaus”, saying the boundaries between insect and flower are unlocked; the flower becomes more like an insect and the insect becomes more like a flower. “The Human Orchid” is about this dissolution of the lines between forms of existence, about mimicry and, through these methods, becoming a bit of something different.
In “An Image of What You See”, a filmmaker tells about a film she is working with. The film within the film is about a woman who loses her eyesight and gains a visual prosthesis that impacts how she orients herself between her inner world and what we think of as reality.
Text: Ellen Klintenberg, Ystads konstmuseum
In the title work of the exhibition, we follow a group of individuals who look to be human but whose behavior suggests something else. They seem to be connected to each other through a sort of network or root system. Through sessions reminiscent of psychological personality tests, their perceptions and orientation abilities are evaluated. Together, they perform different examinations to approach an understanding of humanity.
Other main characters are the bog and the fly orchid, a wild and very unusual orchid species that thrives in damp soil. The fly orchid, which grows in certain places in Scania, has insect-like flowers and lives in symbiosis with another species; to a male thread-waisted wasp, the fly orchid appears to be a female thread-waisted wasp. Ignorant of the fly orchid’s true nature, the male wasp believes it is mating with the flower, thus contributing to pollination.
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari describe this process in their book “A Thousand Plateaus”, saying the boundaries between insect and flower are unlocked; the flower becomes more like an insect and the insect becomes more like a flower. “The Human Orchid” is about this dissolution of the lines between forms of existence, about mimicry and, through these methods, becoming a bit of something different.
In “An Image of What You See”, a filmmaker tells about a film she is working with. The film within the film is about a woman who loses her eyesight and gains a visual prosthesis that impacts how she orients herself between her inner world and what we think of as reality.
Text: Ellen Klintenberg, Ystads konstmuseum
Installation views: The Human Orchid, Ystads Konstmuseum, Ystad, 2024
Works in the exhibition:
The Human Orchid
Marsh
Cross Sections
Wayfinders
Masks
The Human Orchid: Archive
An Image of What You See
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